Birthday Inequalities, Repulsion, and Hard Spheres

We study a birthday inequality in random geometric graphs: the probability of the empty graph is upper bounded by the product of the probabilities that each edge is absent. We show the birthday inequality holds at low densities, but does not hold in general. We give three different applications of the birthday inequality in statistical physics and combinatorics: we prove lower bounds on the free energy of the hard sphere model and upper bounds on the number of independent sets and matchings of a given size in d-regular graphs. The birthday inequality is implied by a repulsion inequality: the expected volume of the union of spheres of radius r around n randomly placed centers increases if we condition on the event that the centers are at pairwise distance greater than r. Surprisingly we show that the repulsion inequality is not true in general, and in particular that it fails in 24-dimensional Euclidean space: conditioning on the pairwise repulsion of centers of 24-dimensional spheres can decrease the expected volume of their union

A proof of the Upper Matching Conjecture for large graphs

We prove that the `Upper Matching Conjecture' of Friedland, Krop, and Markstr\"om and the analogous conjecture of Kahn for independent sets in regular graphs hold for all large enough graphs as a function of the degree. That is, for every $d$ and every large enough $n$ divisible by $2d$, a union of $n/(2d)$ copies of the complete $d$-regular bipartite graph maximizes the number of independent sets and matchings of size $k$ for each $k$ over all $d$-regular graphs on $n$ vertices. To prove this we utilize the cluster expansion for the canonical ensemble of a statistical physics spin model, and we give some further applications of this method to maximizing and minimizing the number of independent sets and matchings of a given size in regular graphs of a given minimum girth

Independent sets, matchings, and occupancy fractions

We prove tight upper bounds on the logarithmic derivative of the independence and matching polynomials of d-regular graphs. For independent sets, this theorem is a strengthening of Kahn's result that a disjoint union of copies of Kd;d maximizes the number of independent sets of a bipartite d-regular graph, Galvin and Tetali's result that the independence polynomial is maximized by the same, and Zhao's extension of both results to all d-regular graphs. For matchings, this shows that the matching polynomial and the total number of matchings of a d-regular graph are maximized by a union of copies of Kd;d. Using this we prove the asymptotic upper matching conjecture of Friedland, Krop, Lundow, and Markstrom. In probabilistic language, our main theorems state that for all d-regular graphs and all �, the occupancy fraction of the hard-core model and the edge occupancy fraction of the monomer-dimer model with fugacity � are maximized by Kd;d. Our method involves constrained optimization problems over distributions of random variables and applies to all d-regular graphs directly, without a reduction to the bipartite case. Using a variant of the method we prove a lower bound on the occupancy fraction of the hard-core model on any d-regular, vertex-transitive, bipartite graph: the occupancy fraction of such a graph is strictly greater than the occupancy fraction of the unique translationinvariant hard-core measure on the infinite d-regular tre

Structure and randomness in extremal combinatorics

In this thesis we prove several results in extremal combinatorics from areas including Ramsey theory, random graphs and graph saturation. We give a random graph analogue of the classical Andr´asfai, Erd˝os and S´os theorem showing that in some ways subgraphs of sparse random graphs typically behave in a somewhat similar way to dense graphs. In graph saturation we explore a ‘partite’ version of the standard graph saturation question, determining the minimum number of edges in H-saturated graphs that in some way resemble H themselves. We determine these values for K4, paths, and stars and determine the order of magnitude for all graphs. In Ramsey theory we give a construction from a modified random graph to solve a question of Conlon, determining the order of magnitude of the size-Ramsey numbers of powers of paths. We show that these numbers are linear. Using models from statistical physics we study the expected size of random matchings and independent sets in d-regular graphs. From this we give a new proof of a result of Kahn determining which d-regular graphs have the most independent sets. We also give the equivalent result for matchings which was previously unknown and use this to prove the Asymptotic Upper Matching Conjecture of Friedland, Krop, Lundow and Markstrom. Using these methods we give an alternative proof of Shearer’s upper bound on off-diagonal Ramsey numbers